Islamist

Arif Uka is a 21-year-old German-Albanian Muslim whose family came from the ethnically divided region of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. He is being held by German police after the shooting deaths Wednesday of two U.S. Air Force members, and injury to two more—one seriously—in a group headed for Afghanistan via the sprawling Frankfurt International Airport and nearby American military base at Ramstein.

The emails.

In August 2010, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the U.S. government on behalf of al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The two organizations questioned the government’s right to put Awlaki on a “kill list” and argued that the “government’s refusal to disclose the standard by which it determines to target U.S. citizens for death independently violates the Constitution.” The complaint continued:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s long march through the institutions.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is more than a radical network, comparable to al Qaeda; more than an ideological phenomenon, like the followers of Khomeini in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and more than a political insurgency, similar to Pakistani jihadism. It is an Egyptian Islamist subculture of great depth and influence.

The Washington Metro bomb plot was consigned to lesser media attention in the last week of the electoral campaign. But reporting on Farooque Ahmed, the 34-year-old Pakistani-American residing in Ashburn, Va., who was stung by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Metro affair, provided a fascinating glimpse of local mosque life.

Cartoonist Molly Norris will no longer be publishing in the Seattle Weekly or in Seattle's City Arts magazine, according a report from the Seattle Weekly. Why? Because she's scared for her life after publishing this cartoon, as part of "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day":

They are not on our side in Afghanistan.

Iran is at war with the United States in Afghanistan. Documents released as part of the Wikileaks dump show that U.S. commanders receive regular reports of collusion between the Iranians, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) Islamist group. The Iranians arm, train, shelter, and fund the jihadists.

As a long string of attacks from New York to Washington to London to Madrid to Bali to Lahore to Baghdad make plain.

A fascinating nugget comes from an unnamed senior U.S. official in a story today by ABC’s Jake Tapper. Citing U.S. intelligence, the official states that "Al Qaeda recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations."

Dealing with radicals.

The provocative anti-Israel posture of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP firebrand, appears to have lost some favor within Turkey itself. But how about among the two and a half million Turkish immigrants and their descendants in Germany? Could Turkish Muslims in Western Europe, under AKP influence, become a major, new focus of radicalism?

Two, three, many Nasrs.

Even after Octavia Nasr apologized for her ill-advised “tweet” over the July 4 holiday expressing her “respect” for the recently deceased Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, CNN fired its senior editor for Middle East affairs. And now bloggers and journalists are up in arms. Some are blaming the job action on “neoconservatives,” which presumably includes THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Daniel Halper who commented on Nasr’s “tweet” here. Israel Lobby author Stephen Walt writes that CNN’s “spineless response” is “one more reason why mainstream journalism is increasingly seen as morally bankrupt.”

Turkey slides toward radicalization. And Barack Obama nominates for ambassador to Turkey Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., a career diplomat with a proven track record of being weak on democracy and human rights.

The Kosovo Republic’s official stance against girls wearing the Muslim headscarf (hijab) in state-supported primary and secondary schools, has brought the country’s main Muslim leader, Naim Ternava, out of a pattern of silence about the penetration of radical Islam in that country.